All contractors holding cellular phones issued and paid for by the D.C. government were ordered to return them last week as the District wrestles with the exploding use of wireless communication devices — and the soaring bills that follow.
City Administrator Dan Tangherlini said he was “absolutely shocked” to learn that District agencies were distributing cell phones to some of their outside help. On Aug. 31, Chief Technology Officer Vivek Kundra directed that all of those phones — 81 as of Wednesday — be collected and their services terminated.
The result, OCTO claims: $103,200 in savings next year, though contractors running up high bills “has not been a pervasive issue,” according to the agency.
A “huge proliferation” of cell phones, Tangherlini said, is among the reasons that the cost of telephone service for the D.C. government, land line or wireless, grew from $25 million in 2003 to $32 million in 2007. While the cost of overall telecom rose 6 percent between 2005 and 2006, wireless spending jumped 12 percent during that same period.
The District has an inventory of roughly 7,600 cell phones that cost on average $66.50 per month, or about $6.1 million a year, according to OCTO.
“It’s the kind of thing you can fix by managing good, strong oversight and exercising control,” Tangherlini said of rising wireless prices.
According to a Sept. 6 memo from Kundra to Tangherlini, OCTO will implement “wireless usage pooling” for most executive agencies by Oct. 7, saving $105,000 per month. D.C. employees will dip into the same mass of minutes, allowing users who exceed their monthly allotment to use the time of those who don’t.
Monthly cell phone bills often shoot up due to overages, Kundra said Wednesday, and pooling is a “basic fundamental policy” for municipalities and other large organizations with the power to procure in bulk.
OCTO also is planning monthly reviews of cell usage to root out waste. And Kundra is piloting his “Office of the Future,” he said, eliminating the desk phones of 10 percent of his employees who primarily use wireless devices for work — something he would eventually like to implement “across the enterprise.”
